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Thursday, February 9, 2012

The Absurdity of Christ

Today I want to explore the supposed purpose behind the message of Christ. The main message, blood sacrifice, not any of the other things like moral teaching or anything like that. We are told that Christ came to earth to die for our sins, so we can be reconciled to God. One could dispute the concept of sin and would be justified in doing so, I think the concept is meaningless but it distracts us from the more important issue of the actual atonement. I wish to argue that the concept of blood sacrifice and substitutional punishment is outdated, barbaric and illogical.

Firstly, the idea bloodshed will pay for wrongdoings assumes that the god in question desires blood. Believing in the god of the philosophers does not get you to this position. Admittedly, the god of the old testament is such a god, in fact there are passages such as Exodus 29:18 which explicitly state that the smell of burnt flesh is a pleasing odour to God. However this is not the god that modern Christians actually believe in. If it were, then Christians would still be engaging in the practice of burnt sacrifices, not to atone for the sins, because God killed himself in human form for that, but because they would believe it to be pleasing to god. After all, isn't that the reason Christians sing songs of praise to God? To please him?

The idea is outdated because it has no relevance to the modern conceptions of justice. Evangelists like Ray Comfort like to use the following analogy:
You commit a crime, the punishment for which is monetary compensation. Someone else pays your fine for you and you are let off the hook. They claim that the execution of Jesus does the same thing, you committed the crime of existing, and for it you deserve to die, Jesus was executed instead of you, so you are let off the hook. Is justice done in either of these cases? I contend that it is not, in fact that to allow such an event to take place would rather be a perversion of justice, yet Christians want you to believe that this is perfect justice.

Let me also try a logical reconstruction of the Christian theory of atonement as I see it. This is possibly an over-simplification, but it should suffice for my purposes here.

1. You trespassed God
2. Trespassing God deserves death
3. Jesus was killed instead of you
Therefore
C. You are no longer culpable for your actions.

It should be quite plain that such an argument is logically invalid as it is currently written above. In order to make the conclusion follow from the premises, a fourth suppressed premise would need to be added.

1. You trespassed God
2. Trespassing God deserves death
3. Jesus was killed instead of you
[4. Any person who has not trespassed God and is killed in the place of another removes the accountability of the guilty person to their actions]
Therefore
C. You are no longer culpable for your actions.

When it is expressed in this way it becomes quite apparent that such a principle is a blatant perversion of justice. If the same principle was applied in society toward its legal system, the entire social structure would likely collapse, as many innocent, honest persons would be imprisoned or killed, while many manipulative and sociopathic individuals would roam free.

Aside from that extremely contentious suppressed premise I think that premises 1 through 3 are not legitimate either. More than that, I think they cannot be established to be legitimate, they are things which we can only ever be in the dark about (assuming that it's impossible to prove God does not exist).

So in conclusion to all of that, I maintain that the message of Christ is absurd. It is outdated, barbaric and without reasonable support. The conclusions of the atonement will only be seen as viable by those who have already committed belief in Christianity. Perhaps it is possible to formulate a more cogent explanation of the atonement, but I suspect that it too will suffer from many of the same failings as my example.